CCHD's quarterly newsletter, Helping People Help Themselves, offers inspiring examples of the good work CCHD funds.
CCHD Funding Fuels Historic Criminal Justice Victory in Florida
By Rhina Guidos
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2025
“Imagine,” says AnnMarie Silveira, “if mistakes you made in your youth affected the rest of your life. In Florida, that’s what was happening to tens of thousands of young folks for a long time.” AnnMarie is the operations manager and training coordinator for Direct Action and Research Training Center, or DART.
Read more about how DART worked with local community members, faith leaders, and civic officials to advocate for new approaches in juvenile justice that better serve communities and youths with arrests for nonviolent offenses here.
Faith in Action: Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award Recipient Ivonn Rivera
By Rhina Guidos
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2024
If anyone had the right to be frustrated with rising crime in her neighborhood, it was Ivonn Rivera. Her car had been repeatedly broken into—at least five times that she remembers—with the windows shattered time and again. Then someone crashed into her vehicle and left without taking responsibility.
Instead of moving out, the 43-year-old mother of four decided to do something.
Read more about 2023 Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award Recipient Ivonn Rivera's work with a local CCHD-funded faith-based civic association to improve living conditions in her neighborhood here.
Parents Organize for Improvements in Public Schools
By Rhina Guidos
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2024
Whether because of race, a history of family abuse, or geography, some children face a tougher future than others from the moment they are born.
Factors like these can influence patterns of behavior that determine a child's success, or lack of it, from an early age.
Read more about how two CCHD-funded organizations in the Midwest are empowering parents to work together with school districts and officials for positive solutions to challenges such as truancy, discipline, and limited access to healthy food in the latest newsletter.
US Bishops and CCHD Work to Address Mental Health Crisis
By Rhina Guidos
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2024
In October 2023, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced a campaign focusing on mental health in response to rising levels of mental illness and related challenges that many in the country now face following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The USCCB said the efforts are “to raise awareness on this important issue, remove the stigma of mental illness and mental health challenges, and advocate that those who struggle receive help.”
Read more about how the USCCB campaign and the work of CCHD-supported organizations are raising awareness and responding to the mental health crisis in the newsletter.
Strangers No Longer: Parish Circles of Support Welcome Migrants in Michigan
By Rhina Guidos
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2023
In 2017, US tensions arose over immigration policy, and laws echoing those public sentiments seemed to be taking hold. At the same time, a group of Catholics in Michigan listened to the words of Pope Francis.
Read more about how Strangers No Longer works at the parish level to welcome immigrants and nurture cooperation between parishioners, clergy, migrants, and public officials on issues ranging from access to vital health care and educational resources to state-issued identification cards and driver's licenses for migrants in the newsletter.
Solidarity and Success: Five Years of "Recognizing the Stranger"
By Rhina Guidos
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2023
They come from the ranks of the poor, migrants, and dispossessed, and they have learned to help those like themselves. Even a pandemic did not stop Recognizing the Stranger. This national program, now in its fifth year, emerged from a partnership between the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) and community organizers from the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).
Read more about this effort to help communities foster understanding between immigrant and non-immigrant neighbors as they work to seek solutions to the unique challenges facing immigrants in the newsletter.
Past issues of Helping People Help Themselves
Building a Land of Opportunity: Four Bands Community Fund
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2023
Renewing the Face of the Earth: Organizing for Sustainability and Economic Health on the Western Plains
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2022
Power to the People: Together New Orleans Provides Refuge from Disasters
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2022
Community Land Trusts: A Winning Model for Affordable Homeownership
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2022
Living Synodality: Walking with Those on the Margins
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2022
From Words to Action: CCHD-Funded Groups Bring Laudato Si' to Life
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2021
Catholic Labor Network: Defending Workers During and Beyond the Pandemic
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2021
CCHD Provides Grants to Fund a Massachusetts Eviction Moratorium
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2021
The Post-Pandemic Path Ahead
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2021
Diocesan Directors: Building Relationships
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2020
Funded Groups Respond to COVID Pandemic
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2020
ARISE Adelante empowers women, youth, and children in immigrant colonias
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2020
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